


Return to Something You Love (The Sticks and Stones Remix)

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: M/M, Remix, X-men Remix 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-13 12:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7977307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I love you,” he says. “There are no other words that matter to me as much as those do.”</i> Erik finds it hard to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return to Something You Love (The Sticks and Stones Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blarfkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Magneto Threat Issued](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3280205) by [blarfkey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarfkey/pseuds/blarfkey). 



> Thank you to my beta (anonymous) who helped this story be better than it was written to be. The title is taken from the poem [Lying in Sadness](https://songandcurios.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/lying-in-sadness-james-l-white/) by James L. White, a lovely work that I think fits their post-Apocalypse relationship well.

The creak of his bedroom door doesn’t wake him – he’s been up for almost half an hour, tracking the bright light of Erik’s mind across the estate. The door closes again, quieter this time for all that Erik knows he is awake. The soft susurrus of cloth hitting the wooden floor breaks the dark quiet, echoing across the bedroom with the retort of a gunshot. The bed dips low and rights itself, the blankets twitching as Erik slides in beside him.

He lies still in the bed, pressed by Charles’s side but not touching him.

He’s not injured, for a change, or not anymore than he has been for the better part of a decade and a half. Those wounds, scored so deep across Erik’s heart and mind that it will likely never heal, are why he lets Erik stay, despite their furious battles. He can no longer bear to be another person Erik has lost.

That’s how Erik would see it – has seen it, Charles corrects himself. After everything they had been and done to each other, Charles was lost to him, the boundary between them as profound as death. Erik, iron-strong and iron-brittle, could find no way to cross the chasm between them.

Charles thinks that if he hadn’t reached out, if he hadn’t born the burden of hope, he and Erik would be staring at one another across a battlefield instead of a bed. Those same foolish mistakes, of pride and passion, spooling out endlessly as they fought and wanted and failed until they and everyone they love died of it

Still Charles waits. He sits motionless in the dark, letting Erik’s rage fill him. The heat burns low in his gut, spreading out to flush his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He can feel the fury as a twitch in the tips of his fingers, a desire to dig into the soft flesh of Erik’s hips.

“He called you an abomination.” Erik’s voice shakes, his breath harsh across Charles’ face. “You, who have done more for those people than anyone else…”

Charles strokes a hand down Erik’s flank, the quivering muscles stilling under his touch.

“I love you,” he says. “There are no other words that matter to me as much as those do.”

Those are the words I would die for, he does not say. Those are the words we have both died for. In another life, another world, a place where you did not come to my bed, our bed, after.

Erik knows all of that.

“And words, as you are so fond of reminding me, aren’t worth very much.”

Erik swells over him, erasing the gap between them and covering Charles’ body with his own. He presses his hands to either side of Charles’ face.

Charles closes his eyes as he feels the press of Erik’s lips, firm and sweet, against his own. He reaches back, arm wrapping around Erik to hold him – to keep him, as if he might vanish from the circle of Charles’ arms. Erik doesn’t say anything.

Charles hears it anyways.

_I have let everyone I love die while I stood there and did nothing. I will not let even an unkind word against you pass unavenged._

The words stop as quickly as they came, the rage sucked away as if it had never been.

Inside the storm of Erik’s mind, there is a calm that Charles glimpses only rarely. It isn’t a place of true peace, safe from the whirling fury, but a place numbed to all feeling. It exists as the eye of magnetic storm where Erik is all metal and no pain. The rattling gates of his childhood prison and the guns of the guards and the arrow that stole the heart of his child all flow around him, easily controlled and doing no more damage.

 Inside that circle, there is no more Erik to hurt.

Charles tugs him back, threading his hands through Erik’s hair, and biting at the swell of his bottom lip. The jolt of Erik’s return is palpable, the rush of joy and grief, rage and love, all flowing back across Charles’ heated skin. His cock stirs weakly against his thigh and his breath catches in his throat.

We are safe, he thinks as Erik nips at the curve of his throat. We are safe and we are together and nothing anyone says can hurt me.

“Hurt you more than I already have, you mean” Erik mutters, hands still against his breastbone.

Charles presses a kiss into the crown of his head. “Let it go.”

“How can I?” Erik does not transcend and Charles thinks that might be one of the reasons he loves him so much.

Erik feels everything. Every bruise and every slight leave permanent marks but every kiss and caress remembered forever, cherished. It is humbling, Charles thinks, to have his slightest touch, his smallest word, kept close to the heart of this beautiful man.

“You can because we are here, now, in this bed you built us, in the school you keep safe for our people,” he says at last.

Erik shudders in his arms, lips brushing against the strong thud of Charles’ heart.

“We are here, together, and safe,” Charles repeats.

He tugs Erik’s hair, bringing their lips together. Erik moans against his mouth, body rocking inside the cradle of Charles’ hips. The heavy press of rage melts, a lightness that clears Charles’ head and leaves him dizzy.

He loves this – loves Erik pressed against him, mind and body pulsing with need. He tips his head as Erik nuzzles under his jaw, teeth and tongue worrying the sensitive flesh. The sharp shock of pain and arousal crowd his chest, leaving him momentarily breathless with desire.

Wedging a hand between their bodies, Charles teases a fingertip around the head of Erik’s cock. Erik responds with a quick twist of his fingers, pulling and stretching Charles’ nipples and it’s Charles who groans, body demanding more now please. Erik, mouth working across the muscles of his chest, thrusts forward, urging them both towards a messy release.

Later, curled together in the center of their bed, Erik threads his fingers through Charles’s, brings them to his lips.

“I wanted to kill him,” he says against the rough pads of Charles’ fingers.

There are too many battles to fight, Charles thinks. Too many small minds, bent on destroying what they don’t understand and belittling what they can’t destroy. Killing them won’t save us, he wants to say. We tried that and we wound up at the ends of Earth, afraid and alone.

But we are here, now, together, in this precious place we created and keep safe. And he knows what that means to Erik, what he is willing to give up to preserve that for their people. ‘

“I know,” Charles says. “But you didn’t.”

 


End file.
